 Hello, my name is Jasmine Vogue. I am Tatlik Wicham from Fort McPherson. I reside in Yellow Knife Northwest Territories with my son Curtis, who is six years old. Can you describe your program? So over the past year, I've done two semesters with Deschenta Center for Research and Learning. One semester was through University of Alberta and the second semester was their first semester with University of British Columbia, where I obtained a certificate in community and land-based research. And now I am doing a program through the UConn University. I am doing the Indigenous Governance Degree. What is the target audience for this program that you're involved in? Who can participate? I guess it's the program for one age group, for families, for women, or men. So the age group for the studies, I believe, is about 18 plus. So we have people of all ages at Deschenta. They even have a program for the kids called Kids U, where you could have small children about two and up. At Deschenta, we're able to have people of all ages that we all learn from. You know, the elders teach and learn from us and the kids teach and learn from us also. Essentially, we're all learning together and bringing knowledge from all over. What is the aim of this program? I guess sort of what do you hope to accomplish through the program? Well, when I attended Deschenta, I was kind of hoping to gain more knowledge on my traditional background or the traditional background of the people where I live. I was able to do that through them and learn about studies such as self-determination, colonization, decolonization. And with my program with UConn University, the Indigenous Governance Program, they are basically preparing youth, I guess, are older than youth, to becoming leaders within the community and being able to bring their knowledge that they learn in the academic world into their communities, helping with self-government and things like that. What happens in your program? Can you describe some of the different activities in the program that participants are involved in? With Deschenta, we did a lot of on-the-land things such as setting fishnets, hunting, high tanning, gathering medicine, and all this coincided with our academic studies that we were doing with the Indigenous Governance Program that I am doing. It's kind of difficult for me because I'm doing most of it online, but because I was here in Yellowknife while they were having the NWT Negotiators Conference or workshop, I was able to attend and participate in that where we were able to speak on our experience of taking this new and exciting program and how we're going to implement it within our communities. How do you measure the success with your program? How do you know that you're being successful with your programming? Do you see a difference within yourself at the end of the program? Can you describe how you're different? After my program with Deschenta, I definitely noticed a difference. It opened up my eyes to a lot of different things in the cultural side and the academic side, and I felt like there was so much more I needed to learn, which is why I went back for a second semester and why I'm now continuing my studies in an area that is somewhat closely related to the studies I was doing out on the land. And I think one of the more important things that I realized was when I had my son out with us on the land and seeing how much he had learned and all the things that he knows and still reflects back onto from the past year. What challenges did you face and how did you overcome them to be successful within your program? One of the challenges I faced was never having spent any time on the land to taking my son out there and having both of us have to adjust to it. It's a lot harder than one may think, but as long as you have community, it really helps. From your perspective, what is indigenous education? To me, indigenous education is kind of merging that academic and traditional knowledge together and using it in a way that it will help people better understand indigenous background, history, knowledge, I guess. From your perspective, what knowledge is important that you would like to pass on to the next generations? I think something that what knowledge that is important for me to pass on is it doesn't matter if, like, how disconnected you are from your culture, there will still always be people there welcoming you with open arms. Even if you are not indigenous, they are still very welcoming and sharing and love to teach people their ways. What is your vision for indigenous education in the next 10 years? I would like to see a lot more of it, especially within the North. And to me, I feel like if you are doing academic studies, like in college or university, that have to do with indigenous and First Nations people, that I feel like you should be spending time on the land so that you're able to get the full experience and see where they come from and what they have to go through and how they have to act just to get through a day. What would you like to see achieved for your people in education? I think I would like to see more youth getting involved and helping work towards a better future for our people. I attended an academic conference with my band last year and we had someone tell us that they want to see all of us in the hospitals and as doctors, as nurses, or see all of us out in the community working, not having to get people flown in from out of town to teach us or to doctor us. And that was something that really stuck out to me. So I feel like education is really important and it's something that we need to push towards.